Haiti's makeshift hospitals saving lives

Posted
January 22, 2010 08:52:00

Our correspondent Phillip Williams spends times in a makeshift hospital in Port-au-Prince treating victims of the Haiti earthquake. One volunteer with no medical training says the patients are arriving in a never ending stream. She criticises the Government for letting people die on the streets of thirst and hunger.

ELEANOR HALL: To Haiti now where the Government is beginning the process of moving 400,000 people out of the shattered capital Port-au-Prince and into tent settlements on the outskirts of the city.

The country's port has been partially reopened to help with the massive supply effort. And the homeless are being told that they will get food, water, and medical care in the new settlements.

But that is still far from the situation in the capital now, as Philip Williams reports.

(Person screaming)

PHILIP WILLIAMS: This is a make-shift field hospital. It's been set up by local doctors and foreign doctors. More help has come in the last few days. It's been set up in the street. That's where the patients have taken, especially at night.

There is a building that they use for operations, but as soon as the operations are complete and the patients are fit, they are taken out into the street.

There are a lot of broken limbs, a lot of fractures; arms, legs, abrasions, and some very serious cases. Some cases that are simply hopeless. There is, what appears to be a body just by one side here. I'm just walking through.

And over here in this corner, there are drips hanging from a tin roof and these are some of the more seriously ill patients over here.

It's make-shift, it's by any Western standards, totally primitive and squalid, but it is working. They are saving lives here and it is a vast improvement on the last few days.

VERONICA FYSCH: My name is Veronica FYSCH.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: Do you have any medical training at all?

VERONICA FYSCH: None.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: So it's really, you're learning on the job.

VERONICA FYSCH: I'm learning on the job.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: There are very, very difficult times.

VERONICA FYSCH: It's extremely difficult to see that, extremely difficult. And as a Haitian, to see all the suffering, it's very difficult.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: How have you kept going?

VERONICA FYSCH: I don't think about it. Just keep going. I don't know for later. I know once I got depressed, if it's going to hit me, but right now I don't have a choice, I just keep going.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: When you've been working like this for days?

VERONICA FYSCH: Six days.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: How much sleep have you had?

VERONICA FYSCH: Three to four hours.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: You must be absolutely exhausted.

VERONICA FYSCH: I am exhausted, I think we're all exhausted. Because I haven't slept for so long!

PHILIP WILLIAMS: But the need never ends, it's just an endless stream of people, it's...

VERONICA FYSCH: Endless stream of people and everyday we're getting more people, and it's just keep going, and keep coming.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: Let's hope things improve soon.

VERONICA FYSCH: We're praying. We're praying hard. We're praying strong, there's so much people and so many of them. I don't know how much more we can take, we need the food distributions to start and we need water to start.

It's not possible after nine days, because people are dying of thirsts and dying of hunger and they already hurt, they have no house, no housing, nothing.

What are the bureaucrats doing? It's about time they start doing something!